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3D Xpoint memory: Faster-than-flash storage unveiled

bbc.com

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Re: 3D Xpoint memory: Faster-than-flash storage unveiled

#21

Post by digikata »

nick-parker wrote: post #8
Splendor wrote: post #3

So this is essentially persistent DRAM?

The article mentions: >By contrast, 3D XPoint works by changing the properties of the material that makes up its memory cells to either having a high resistance to electricity to represent a one or a low resistance to represent a zero. Which sounds a lot like memristors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor to me. If it's memristor memory, the main advantages are that it's cheap, uses hugely less power than flash,…

The press release seems to be intentionally silent on the actual memory cell technology. Another possible tech the cell might be based upon is some variant of Nano-RAM.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nano-RAM

Re: 3D Xpoint memory: Faster-than-flash storage unveiled

#22

Post by adsr »

aidenn0 wrote: post #17
adsr wrote: post #16

I hope someone will give a push behind MRAM which seems like a more interesting option imo. MRAM has similar performance to SRAM, similar density to DRAM but much lower power consumption than DRAM, and is much faster and suffers no degradation over time in comparison to flash memory. It is this combination of features that some suggest makes it the “universal memory”, able to replace SRAM, DRAM, EEPROM, and flash. ht…

I'd like to see a source for the "similar density to DRAM" my understanding is that it's an 8F2 footprint, and scaling it down to small process nodes is still problematic, even with spin-torque transfer. All that being said, there are people who make the exact same claims about RRAM as you quote for MRAM, which 3d-xpoint appears to be. Also note that you can buy MRAM parts right now, which are replacements for batter…

Fair point, perhaps I should have phrased it more as a technology with similar applications. I find it interesting that there are parts available now, albeit made on a 180nm process apparently.

Re: 3D Xpoint memory: Faster-than-flash storage unveiled

#23

Post by the8472 »

aidenn0 wrote: post #17
adsr wrote: post #16

I hope someone will give a push behind MRAM which seems like a more interesting option imo. MRAM has similar performance to SRAM, similar density to DRAM but much lower power consumption than DRAM, and is much faster and suffers no degradation over time in comparison to flash memory. It is this combination of features that some suggest makes it the “universal memory”, able to replace SRAM, DRAM, EEPROM, and flash. ht…

I'd like to see a source for the "similar density to DRAM" my understanding is that it's an 8F2 footprint, and scaling it down to small process nodes is still problematic, even with spin-torque transfer. All that being said, there are people who make the exact same claims about RRAM as you quote for MRAM, which 3d-xpoint appears to be. Also note that you can buy MRAM parts right now, which are replacements for batter…

> my understanding is that it's an 8F2 footprint

Where does that come from? From everything I've read is that its structure is fairly analogous to DRAM, "simply" replacing the capacitor with the magnetic tunnel junction, which has its component layers stacked vertically, thus not really taking up any extra space.

> scaling it down to small process nodes is still problematic, even with spin-torque transfer.

yeah, that's the main gist I'm getting too from following the news.

> people who make the exact same claims about RRAM as you quote for MRAM, which 3d-xpoint appears to be.

At least the xpoint incarnation still seems to be slower than DRAM according to that article, while MRAM is being offered as SRAM/battery-backed DRAM drop-in replacement.

Re: 3D Xpoint memory: Faster-than-flash storage unveiled

#24

Post by simpsond »

minthd wrote: post #12

A guess: this uses memristors(i.e. rram). crossbar is a startup in the field, their site gives plenty of details about the tech. http://www.crossbar-inc.com/

Do memristors read or write based on the applied voltage? I noticed that in some of the intel marketing material.

Re: 3D Xpoint memory: Faster-than-flash storage unveiled

#25

Post by the8472 »

adsr wrote: post #22
aidenn0 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see a source for the "similar density to DRAM" my understanding is that it's an 8F2 footprint, and scaling it down to small process nodes is still problematic, even with spin-torque transfer. All that being said, there are people who make the exact same claims about RRAM as you quote for MRAM, which 3d-xpoint appears to be. Also note that you can buy MRAM parts right now, which are replacements for batter…

Fair point, perhaps I should have phrased it more as a technology with similar applications. I find it interesting that there are parts available now, albeit made on a 180nm process apparently.

these guys claim 55nm mram: http://www.avalanche-technology.com/about/public-relations

Re: 3D Xpoint memory: Faster-than-flash storage unveiled

#26

Post by wtallis »

tmd83 wrote: post #20

The biggest thing that just came to my mind is for durable storage. I think I can some problem at work radically differently and much simpler if I had this available in 10s of GB. How? Because its bit addressable and persistent. Together this makes it much simpler to implement some durable storage . We don't need the log structure good for NAND block erase issue. We don't need to worry about the flush cost compared t…

They're claiming three orders of magnitude faster than NAND and three orders of magnitude more durable than NAND, which means you'll still need wear leveling to get it to last for several years, but you apparently won't have the complexity of erase blocks being much larger than writable page size.

I do wonder how much it would be slowed down by the kinds of sophisticated error correction SSDs are now relying on.

Re: 3D Xpoint memory: Faster-than-flash storage unveiled

#27

Post by kken »

minthd wrote: post #12

A guess: this uses memristors(i.e. rram). crossbar is a startup in the field, their site gives plenty of details about the tech. http://www.crossbar-inc.com/

RRAM was there first, and it will previal.

Lets just forget about this "memristor" PR-nonesense. HP did as well. (Their activities seem to be dead)

Re: 3D Xpoint memory: Faster-than-flash storage unveiled

#28

Post by DasIch »

wtallis wrote: post #19
DasIch wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It appears to be slower than DRAM, so it's not going to be a sufficient replacement. I also see no indication of how much storage it actually offers. The range between RAM and SSDs isn't that large and I think it's going to be a huge difference whether they can offer 16GB, 32GB or even 64GB at an affordable price. For a lot of users 16GB might not be worthwhile, 64GB might actually allow some people to not use a SSD…

They're promising the first chip to be 128Gb, which is where MLC flash is right now. But their die size looks a lot larger than MLC.

Interesting. At 128GB it's definitely practical to put your system partition and applications on it. If you rely heavily on cloud services that would be more than sufficient for most people and even if it isn't you could add an SSD for music and videos.

If they release it next year and it turns out well, I can certainly see Apple pulling such a move for the MacBook (Air).

Re: 3D Xpoint memory: Faster-than-flash storage unveiled

#30

Post by rosser »

wtallis wrote: post #26
tmd83 wrote: post #20

The biggest thing that just came to my mind is for durable storage. I think I can some problem at work radically differently and much simpler if I had this available in 10s of GB. How? Because its bit addressable and persistent. Together this makes it much simpler to implement some durable storage . We don't need the log structure good for NAND block erase issue. We don't need to worry about the flush cost compared t…

They're claiming three orders of magnitude faster than NAND and three orders of magnitude more durable than NAND, which means you'll still need wear leveling to get it to last for several years, but you apparently won't have the complexity of erase blocks being much larger than writable page size. I do wonder how much it would be slowed down by the kinds of sophisticated error correction SSDs are now relying on.

"Bit-addressable". I don't think this suffers from the same issues that NAND does with successive writes. The other articles I'm seeing after a quick search also suggest a three order of magnitude increase in write endurance.
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